Silk Protein Evolution and Spider Phylogenetics: an EST Approach

加州大学滨江分校的谢丽尔·林博士获得了一笔研究蜘蛛及其丝蛋白进化的资助。 圆织蜘蛛的拖丝作为生物材料非常珍贵，因为这些蛋白质纤维具有显著的强度和韧性。 大多数关于拖丝的知识来自于对两个物种的研究。 有超过34，000个描述的物种，并且除了拖丝之外，大多数物种还纺出多种类型的丝，蜘蛛丝是令人难以置信的多样化。 实际上，人们对蜘蛛丝的机械特性和遗传学知之甚少。 Hayashi博士的第一个目标是记录蜘蛛丝广泛的分子和生物力学变化。 为了做到这一点，她将对不同种类的蜘蛛纺出的丝纤维进行拉伸测试，然后克隆在丝腺组织中表达的基因转录本。 她研究的第二个目标是追踪蛛丝基因序列是如何随着蜘蛛的进化而变化的。 这项工作涉及从DNA序列重建蜘蛛的系统发育史。为了完成她的研究目标，林博士将培养一名博士后科学家和一名研究生。 此外，加州大学滨江分校的本科生将通过小型独立项目参与，这些项目旨在在一两个学期内完成。 Hayashi博士的研究结果将推进丝蛋白和蜘蛛进化的知识状态，并将大大扩大蜘蛛DNA序列的国际数据库。 这项工作也与正在开发的大规模生产人造蜘蛛丝的商业技术有关。 将丝纤维的性能与特定丝基因序列联系起来的相关数据对于新型生物材料的设计至关重要。

Dr. Cheryl Hayashi at the University of California, Riverside has received a grant to study the evolution of spiders and their silk proteins. The dragline silks of orb-weaving spiders are highly prized as biomaterials because these protein-based fibers have remarkable combinations of strength and toughness. Most knowledge of dragline silks comes from studies done on two species. With over 34,000 described species, and with most species spinning multiple types of silks in addition to the dragline, spider silks are incredibly diverse. Very little is actually known about the mechanical properties and genetics of spider silks. Dr. Hayashi's first goal is to document the extensive molecular and biomechanic variation of spider silks. To do this, she will perform tensile tests of silk fibers spun by different species of spiders, and will then clone the gene transcripts that are expressed in silk gland tissue. The second goal of her study is to trace how silk gene sequences have changed as spiders evolved. This work involves reconstructing the phylogenetic history of spiders from DNA sequences.To accomplish her research objectives, Dr. Hayashi will train a postdoctoral scientist and a graduate student. In addition, undergraduate students at the University of California, Riverside will participate through small, independent projects that are designed to be completed within one or two academic quarters. The results of Dr. Hayashi's studies will advance the state of knowledge of silk proteins and spider evolution, and will significantly enlarge the international database of spider DNA sequences. The work is also relevant to commercial technologies that are being developed to mass-produce artificial spider silk. Correlational data that link performance of silk fibers to specific silk gene sequences are critical for the design of novel biomaterials.